


A Murder of Crows

by Gelgoogle



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Drama, Mentor and student - Freeform, Mostly Eileen, Starts in the middle, Valtr cameo, achronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6768985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gelgoogle/pseuds/Gelgoogle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eileen the Crow hunts the men who have lost themselves to the hunt, but her greatest enemy may be the pupil she lost years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Murder of Crows

Eileen never knew quite what to make of the League.

Oh, she certainly knew their history. When Gehrman, the legendary first hunter, hung up his trick weapon, nearly a dozen different splinter factions sprung up among his surviving apprentices, divided over how the hunt should proceed and who should lead the charge. For all their lofty ambitions and attacks on each other's character, the schism amounted to little more than the old hunters divvying up the city like common criminals. Cromwell had appointed himself defender of the Church and patrolled the Cathedral Ward with his followers. Schlessinger's men operated out of the Church of the Good Chalice in Old Yharnam. A man whose name she could not recall took upon himself the unenviable of patrolling the sewers and aqueducts on the suspicion that these were the places the beasts went to lick their wounds during the daylight hours.

And then there was the League. A madman with delusions of grandeur had conned a handful of hunters into taking up residence on the edge of civilization to exterminate the invisible monsters responsible for all of man's misdeeds. As if they truly believed the scourge of beasts was some manner of divine punishment visited upon the people for straying from the proper path.

Funny, that. 

People had said the same thing about the scarlet sin in a tiny village far to the north. 

She put it from her mind. That was a lifetime ago.

And in her current lifetime, she found herself standing in a drafty old shed, face-to-bucket with Valtr, the self-styled Master of the League.

“Ah, good Crow,” the League man said with a gracious nod. “You have my thanks for attending to us in our time of need, but matters have been settled. The corrupted confederate has been felled. A pity. The Madaras Twins were among my most dedicated vermin hunters.”

Behind her scented mask, Eileen's eyebrow rose in equal parts suspicion and indignation. Exactly how had the matter been settled? Had he called her all the way out to these Forbidden Woods for a wild goose chase? 

“This has been a fine waste of my time, Beast Ea—”

“My sweet Crow” Valtr's voice took on a sibilance that would not have been out of place among the snakes he so frequently killed in his nightly hunt, “you would do well to leave old wives' tales to the old wives.”

Eileen pursed her lips, unseen.

It was petty. She should have known better. But she did not care for madmen in the wilderness dragging her away from her duties in the blood-slicked city. If it had been anything less than rumors of Valtr's most trusted lieutenant murdering his blood brother in cold blood and fleeing into the night, Eileen would not have dignified them with a visit. Let the madmen tend to madmen.

But there was no telling the kind of beast a Madaras boy could become, so she sought them out all the same. The greater the hunter, the greater the beast.  
But there was no hunter, no beast, no reason for her to be here, baiting Valtr with a past better left forgotten.

“You have my thanks, Valtr,” she began again. “One less blood-mad hunter to stain my blade.”

The bucket tilted in confusion. 

“Do you think I was the one to pass sentence on Madaras the Younger?”

Eileen felt herself go very still.

“Who but you, Valtr?” 

Yamamura of the East had vanished years ago. Henryk had shaken off his bout of insanity to return to the city. The twins were dead along with most of his exceedingly few followers. The hunters of the city didn't care for the hunters of the woods.

“I find myself surprised your compatriot did not speak of it.”

And now Eileen felt herself go tense.

“I have no compatriots, Valtr.”

“Yes, yes, I know yours is an order of one,” Valtr said with a casual air that undermined how secretive that piece of information was supposed to be. “Just as you are the Crow of Yharnam, the fellow who came to me just last night must have been the Crow of Cainhurst.”

The half-rotted floorboards creaked beneath Eileen's boots as she advanced on Valtr, who was feeling more confused than ever. He resisted the urge to reach for his whirligig saw, a loan from the Powder Kegs that had become a memento after their order died with Old Yharnam. It wasn't meant for the killing of his fellow hunters, and it would be a shame to besmirch the memory of those great men, regardless of what the Church had to say about them.

Of course, he would be foolish not to defend himself from what could very well be an angry Crow. 

He was not the man who had lit a fire in Eileen's belly and put a fear in her heart.

“Let me be clear, Valtr. There is no Crow of Cainhurst. Anyone to tell you otherwise is a fool at best and a vicious liar at the worst.”

.

.

.

In shadows of the twisting, labyrinthine city, the boy panted, too tired to lift his hand even to wipe away at the sweat on his brow. So his face stayed slick and gleaming in the pale moonlight. But even in his bone-deep fatigue, even with the blood still dribbling out of old wounds mostly closed by the good blood, he felt the rush of excitement far more acutely than any sort of pain.

“Serves you right, you damned hunters!” He said before spitting on one of the corpses. “You think yourselves the kings of creation, but you're just another dumb Yharno, aren't you?”

The dark figure at the edge of his vision started but drew no closer.

“Go home, boy.”

He blinked away the sweat, the fatigue, the shock. He was hearing things. Surely.

“Eileen, the night is young! There are so many more hunters—”

“The hunters are none of your concern. They are my duty and mine alone.”

There was a note of finality in Eileen's tone that he found chilling, but what kind of Crow would he be if he let that sway him? He steeled himself, just as Eileen taught him.

“Don't be silly, Eileen! How will I ever take the Blades of Mercy if you don't allow me—”

Again, she cut him off, her voice tearing through his more viciously than any saw blade. 

“You will never have them. These blades are not for you. This responsibility is not for you. This was a mistake. There is no place for you in Yharnam,” she said as casually, as matter of factly as a woman who had not spent the last six months living, eating and working with him. She spoke to him like any other Yharnamite now. But he was no Yharnamite. They would not have bonded otherwise. So why? Why now? Why like this? “You know better than to be on the street after dark. Go home, boy.”

In the feathery flutter of a mantle he thought he was destined inherit, she was gone, traveling by rooftop and shortcut, before the boy could find his voice again.

It didn't matter. There was no one for him to go, no one for him to tell. He was alone again.

.

.

.

“Good evening, Eileen,” Alberto's voice drifted up to Eileen on an awning just overhead. “To what do I owe this singular pleasure?”

Eileen peered out across the rapidly receding darkness. The sun crept in, and the hunters and the beasts were driven back to their lairs. Not that anyone could spot the difference anymore. To think Ludwig's holy order had degenerated to this snarling mob. 

Eileen never met the Holy Blade, but Catarina had spoken highly of him. If Catarina had, then Sven likely had as well. And the Crow before Sven. And the Crow before him. And so on and so forth. 

But Eileen had not gone to old Alberto to talk of dead swordsmen. No, she was far more concerned with a man among the living.

“Tell me, Alberto,” Eileen said just loudly enough for her voice to carry down to the slightly ajar window. “Have you heard tell of another Crow in Yharnam?”

“You think you have an impostor?”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

She liked Alberto most nights. He was an outsider, much like her, and he had proven himself time and again as a surprisingly well-informed sort. He had granddaughters of such an age that gossip flew to them like flies to a carcass. More importantly, the local men of the hunt didn't mind gabbing as they passed by an old foreigner's window, thinking him too dumb or too withered to absorb all of the information they handed out so carelessly. Who would think the old cripple would make for an invaluable informant?

Yes, Eileen liked Alberto most nights. When Eileen returned from her wonderful waste of time in the woods with too many questions, she had decided this would not be one of those nights. She wasn't in the mood to like anything.

“Hmm,” Alberto said in such a way that Eileen could almost see him scratching his chin in thought. “I have heard the Yharnos going on about you lately, but maybe that wasn't you.”

“Tell me everything.”

.

.

.

“There's two of them,” he said. 

“I can count. Or do you think I've gone daft before my time?”

“No, no!” he flushed. “I just mean... there are two of them and two of us. It's perfect.”

“Is it now?”

His face screwed up in a frown. He knew he had said something wrong, but he couldn't figure out what she wanted.

“It... is. You won't be outnumbered like you are most nights.”

“Why wouldn't I be outnumbered? Two hunters gone mad and one hunter of hunters to do away with them.”

So that was it.

“Eileen! That's absurd! These aren't the common rabble. They're veterans. Church-trained. You need me.”

“I don't remember needing a boy not yet old enough to shave when I took up the badge. Your role is to watch, as it always is. Now stay put and try not to get into any trouble.”

She was off and moving into position before he could get another word in edgewise. It didn't keep him trying to have the last word.

“I shave.”

.

.

.

It took some time, but even the Yharnamites started catching on.

Eileen was already a boogeyman in Yharnam, which was quite a feat in a city overrun by living nightmares, but even the common hunters seemed to understand there was a method to her madness. Until there wasn't. At least half of them thought the Crow had gone entirely mad, but some of the observant men of the hunt noticed the discrepancies. One was taller. One carried a single blade. One wore an ornate helmet. 

So they started spinning up new names and titles. 

The hunters who had an ear for accents called her “The Northerner.” The hunters who noticed how much more viciously the newcomer killed his victims, as compared to the clean, precise strikes of Eileen's, took to calling “The Bloody Crow.” Valtr had already called him “The Crow of Cainhurst.”

There was no Crow of Cainhurst.

But there had once been a boy from Cainhurst.

.

.

.

She kicked him in such a way as to make sure it didn't hurt.

Well, not much. 

It was his job to make sure the fall didn't break anything.

The kick to his solar plexus did a fantastic job of driving every bit of oxygen out of his lungs. It also sent his sword clattering across the rooftop. Two long steps were all it took to put herself between the boy and his sword.

“I expected better.”

The boy, with his brown eyes and wavy hair and round cheeks that reminded her he had put aside his toys to take up the sword all too recently, blinked up at her and gasped his way back to clarity. He wanted to say something, but Eileen didn't want to hear it. No excuses. Only hard truths.

“You want to be in the business of hunting hunters? Is that it? A pity. I only see a rank amateur.”

“I... I'm lasting longer.”

“Indeed. I laid you low in four blows rather than three.”

He propped himself up on his skinny little arms and knobby little elbows.

“This time, I'll last five!”

“What makes you so sure there will be a next time?”

“You wouldn't have spent the last month beating on me if you thought I was a lost cause.”

He smiled up at her in a way that crinkled his child's cheeks.

If not for the raven's make, he might have seen his stern mentor smiling back.

.

.

.

She knew there was no going back the moment she heard the strange whir of Djura's giant gun. 

The old cyclops had told her its proper name a long time ago, but she only ever thought of it as Djura's secret weapon, the thing that let him announce his intention to protect the beasts of Old Yharnam with any hope of enforcing that declaration. It was a modern marvel of engineering. 

It was also entirely out of place for Eileen to be hearing it on the streets of Central Yharnam. 

She went to the sound of Djura's gun like a moth to the flame. She paid only half a mind to the worried, confused shouts of the huntsmen on the prowl, muttering to themselves about Old Yharnam's madman. Had he decided to wage war on them? Was he fighting back to save the beasts of all of Yharnam?

That might have been better. At least she could have put Djura down. At least it would have made sense.

Instead, she saw a stocky blond stretched out bonelessly on the cobblestones. Djura's gun, in miniature, had been strapped to his back, but that wasn't the weapon that captivated her as she rounded the corner to stumble patch of lamp-lit street. 

No, her eyes were fixed upon the long, bloody sword. 

She saw the blade and the road map of fresh wounds upon Djura's dead apprentice. She saw the arm wreathed in Cainhurstian gauntlet that held the sword. She saw the tall man in mismatched Cainhurstian helmet and Crowfeather garb. 

Eileen couldn't know why Djura's boy had strayed so far from their safe haven. Had he started courting a girl in the city proper and came to see her? Was he trying to reach the cemetery by Oedon Chapel to pay respects to a fallen comrade? She didn't know. She couldn't know.

But she knew that Djura and his ilk were good men. They didn't deserve to die.

She moved.

He didn't spare her so much as a glance as he knelt to collect a vial of blood from the dead man's thigh. 

He did't even look up as he slid backward, almost invisible, to avoid the scything strike aimed at his neck just below the helmet's rim. 

He had done so simply, so naturally that it had come to him like breathing. 

And then Eileen felt the sting of a blow below her lower-most ribs, an eviscerating strike.

He had sought strength and found more than Eileen could comprehend.

.

.

.

“You're going to get yourself killed if you keep this up.”

The boy nearly jumped out of his skin. He whipped his head around like he was trying to give himself whiplash. The voice had slithered out of the darkness without origin or context. He felt naked. He felt vulnerable.

He hadn't felt this way since the Church men came to his castle. 

He hated that feeling.

“Show yourself, hunter of Yharnam!”

Eileen almost laughed. He surely thought himself so striking with his blood-blade in hand and a dead hunter at his feet. Never mind that old Otto had one foot in the grave long before the boy ambushed him. No great crime, of course. Otto had been one turn of the moon away from becoming a beast. The boy had saved her the trouble.

“I am no hunter of Yharnam,” said Eileen as she stepped into a narrow pool of murky light. “I am a hunter of hunters.”

“You! It's you! So, you do exist!”

He had said it an almost rapturous way. 

“You have sense enough to flatter me, but that will only get you so far. Why is it that a boy like yourself would seek a woman like me?”

“There's a saying my father taught me,” said the boy, posture relaxing, relief settling. He had come to the end of a long journey just to find her. “It comes from a far off land. It goes... 'Seek strength. The rest will follow.'”

“You think me strong?”

“You stand against the hunters when no one else will. I can think of no one stronger.”

The seconds ticked into infinity, and just when he was about to speak, she sealed their fates.

“Come along, boy. You and I have much to discuss.”

.

.

.

She could not shake the feeling that he had insulted her.

To drape himself in a raven's mantle was one thing. To avoid her strike was another. But not fighting back, to slip into the inky night just as she had taught him... he had told her in so many words that she was not worth the stain on his blade. He would not finish her. She was not worth the effort.

A pity she didn't reciprocate the feeling. As soon as she jammed the vial into her thigh and felt her flesh knit itself back together to hold her organs in, she moved again.

He was blood-drunk. 

He had killed too many. Too many good men like Djura's apprentice and not enough madmen like Otto or Henryk. The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst. Yes, the name suited him. He lived for blood now, and he lived to see Cainhurst avenged. She should have seen it so much sooner.

He hated Yharnam and the hunters. He didn't kill to keep the hunt in order. He didn't kill to protect the people caught in the widening gyre of Yharnam's madness. 

He killed because the Executioners had killed. He killed because he could. He killed because it was the only thing that gave his life meaning anymore.

So she would end it. She would track his trail of corpses, follow the whispers and keep his vendetta against the Church in mind when she finally tracked him to the Grand Cathedral.

Of course. 

She found him kneeling in a mockery of prayer. He rose slowly, sword and pistol in hand. 

“Eileen.”

“Francois.”

“Why have you come? Did you not learn your lesson the last time?”

“Why else? I have come to hunt a hunter.”

“I am so much more than a hunter now, and you have come to die.”

At once, they lunged.

**Author's Note:**

> Not really happy with this one but I banged it out anyway because I want to get back in the swing of writing. If I want to write anything decent again, I have to get those creative juices flowing. Even if it means my first few stories back are garbage. 
> 
> As you can tell, this was born of a baseless theory that the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst is Eileen's student gone bad. He is the Red Hood to her Batman. The other, darker idea I had in mind was that he's some sort of fantasy of the son she never had given flesh by the Great Ones, so she sees it as her responsibility to hunt down her demonspawn. As you can see, I went with the more mundane Cainhurst origin.
> 
> This was longer in my head, going more into the student's past and his descent into villainy as he becomes a Vileblood to take revenge on Yharnam and the Church for Cainhurst, but I'm more interested in Eileen. I want to get used to writing her so I can do another story I've had in mind about Eileen getting caught up in a conspiracy years before the good hunter arrives to battle the Great Ones.


End file.
